Following on from my guide on Gemming Your Gear, I thought I would move on to enchanting, the other more "traditional" way of improving the stats on your character and their gear. If you're not an enchanter there are 2 ways of getting an item enchanted, the traditional way was to find an enchanter, give them the required materials (either bought from the auction house or acquired through using the disenchant option during dungeon runs), "trade" the item in the "not to be traded" slot let them use their profession spell to enchant your item and you're done (although I'd always offer a tip even if they don't ask). However, since Wrath of the Lich King, it has been possible to enchant vellums into scrolls which can be sold on the Auction House so it may be worth buying a scroll from there and selling your materials. To transfer the enchant from the scroll simply right click the vellum and left click on the item you want enchanted. Simples! as the cool kids say now.

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News this past week saw the announcement that loot in the new Looking For Raid versions of the Dragon Soul being introduced in 4.3 will have new loot rules. 

Whilst players will still be offered the existing options we have now of Need/Greed/Disenchant/Pass, items will now be flagged as Tank/DPS/Heals and maybe a combination of 2 for items that are not aimed squarely at one role. So if a spirit dagger drops those pesky mages/warlocks won't be able to steal our loot. The reason is such an item would be tagged as a healer item and therefore our rolls would be enhanced by adding 100 to them, so even if a mage needed and rolled 100, we only require a need roll of 1 to beat their roll as 1+100 = 101. Although at the moment its not sure if such an item would be able to be equally rolled on (and rightly so) by our shadowy cousins, shaman and those big owl type things druids morph into from time to time. Now while this is all good I really think Blizzard are missing the point here because even this system is full of flaws. 

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Yes finally I have had a chance to experience the nerfed content that is the Firelands raids a few times and hell they  have nerfed it hard.

Prior to the recent nerfs my beloved guild, Saturday Knight Fever, were 3 of 7 in the Firelands with Shannox, Beth'tilac and Lord Rhyiolith soundly beaten. We worked hard for them kills and learned a lot about the fights as we perfected the strategies to our groups style.. 

The day the nerf came the guys killed 3 new bosses, Alysrazor, Baleroc and Majordomo Staghelm on the first night. They breezed through the content with people that hadn't even stepped foot into Firelands until that night and we're now stuck fighting Ragnaros.

Now my issue here is that despite killing these 3 bosses for the past 3 weeks I'm not convinced that anyone has really learned the fights (myself included) as some there have been certain team combinations that have failed to kill one of the bosses therefore it seems that we're just zerging our way through and while it's good for team morale the die hard raider in me weeps tears of sadness as I am getting no personal sense of accomplishment.

As things stand now Blizzard should just place a chest full of loot and rep in by the portal and send us straight to Ragnaros, which is thankfully providing the team with a challenge, which hopefully will be beaten as soon as we can field a solid team with 2 main spec tanks.

Now I seriously hope that 4.3 is very close because if not we're going to be faced with farming Firelands on 2 nights a week and using our other raid night to gear up alts. So overall my opinion is summed up by the irelord himself, Too Soon Exectus! Lets hope that with the coming of a 3rd level of raid difficulty the nerf bat  will stay away from our raids until they are no longer current content.

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Been a long while, since I posted a "Backstory", in fact just looking at the last one and its been almost 6 months, man I have been slacking more than I realised. So I guess it's time to make amends for my erroneous ways.

So just a brief recap of where I left the story, a few months into The Burning Crusade myself and a few friends set up our own raiding guild, Deadwood. We had high hopes and put a team of suitably skilled raiders together and battled through Karazhan and eventually we got 25 people and went and killed Gruul.

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With Patch 4.3, we're getting one of the most exiting cosmetic changes ever introduced into World of Warcraft, transmogrification. Fortunately, the WoW community have christened this "Mogging" because quite frankly the word transmogrification is a horrible word to say. When I first heard it I though that it was a term invented by the folks over in Irvine, CA, but apparently it's been around for a while and the earliest recorded use of the word according to the Oxford English Dictionary was way back in 1656.

Unsurprisingly the word simply means:

To change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic, grotesque or bizarre.

So, technically druids transmogrify!

But of course we're not here to consider that we want to make our characters unique little snowflakes and look cool at the same time by changing the appearance of our armour to look like another piece of armour. But the big question being asked is how do I get my lovely T12 stuff to look like my uber cool piece of armour? Hopefully this quick guide will help you do just that!

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Blizzard have recently published details of the Looking For Raid Tool that will be introduced into the game with the upcoming 4.3 patch, many respected commentators have already started predicting it as being a failure. But what is all the fuss about?

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Welcome to the second of my guides on healing strategies for the Cataclysm dungeons, yes I KNOW we're many months in and us veterans can do it sleep walk but many alts and new players are coming through now. My viewpoint will be from that of a priest, but much of the information will be generic to help out other healing classes also. Even if you're not a healer you can get some benefit from reading as you'll understand how you can help out your healer at key times during the encounters.

Blackrock Caverns is a medium length dungeon with 5 bosses, it is located in Blackrock Mountain and consists of tunnels created by the Twilight Hammer who are using this as a transport hub for reinforcing Ragnaros in Mount Hyjal as well as conducting experiments to turn humanoids into dragonkin.
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Gemming your gear has become a way of life for us since the Burning Crusade, but with all the changes to specs and stats how many of us really know what we're doing when gemming our gear?

The aim of this post is to cover off the basics of filling those lovely sockets in that shiny new piece of gear that the big bad you just killed dropped and then go a little deeper and take at look at maximising the benefits you can gain by adding gems to your gear.
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This weeks post is a response to the Blizzard's request for feedback on classes to give them ideas as what to look for in terms of changes and adjustments for a future game update. While they didn't give a specific point in time I'm sure they are looking beyond 4.3 and probably in WoW 5.0.

The priest threads can be found at EU / US
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Back in April 2010, Blizzard announced the single raid lockout for 10 and 25 man raids. They also announcede that the loot in Cataclysm raids would be the same iLevel for 10 and 25 man raids. It is now 10 months since Cata launched and I have had time to assess the impact this policy has had on raiding, guilds and the game in general.  I finished Wrath in a 25 man raid team that was in turmoil due to internal guild drama and decided that in Cata I would stop being a progression type raider and "go casual" with a group of guys that I had raided with during TBC and early Wrath, we like to consider it a retirement home for ex-casual hardcore raider. During this time,we have only done 10 man raids, so my viewpoint may be somewhat blinkered or one sided but I still think it is valuable in assessing the impact of the policy that is in place.
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Welcome to my Circle of Healing questionnaire answers. This was someting started a few years back by Miss Medicina (source) and seems to be popular among the Warcraft healing community at the moment and being a sheep I thought I'd join in.

Q) What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? 

A) Evlyxx, Discipline Priest with Holy tendencies.

Q) What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

A) 10 man raiding although this has only been since Cataclysm, prior to this I was in 40 and 25 man raid groups.

Q) What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? 

A) Atonement, because it is such a unique way to heal and extremely efficient. It heals for more than Heal and has less cast time and because Smite/Holy Fire generates Evangelism it is just as mana efficient despite the extra mana cost.

Q) What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?  

A) Until very recently it was Flash Heal it was just too expensive to cast but with new content I always find it harder to heal using Atonement until I am comfortable with positioning and knowing the incoming damage and  Heal just doesn't cut the mustard anymore, its too weak and too slow so I have replaced it with Flash Heal, so right now the least used spell is Heal.

Q) What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? 

A) Flexibility, 2 healing specs give us all kinds of options and both specs are awesome as either tank healing or raid healing.

Q) What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? 

A) That we don't have a real specialization in healing. Pallies are great tank healers and shaman and druids are awesome raid healers. Priests do both very well but we are not the go to class for either which is a curse of our strength.

Q) In a 10 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? 

A) To be honest it depends what classes I'm healing with. Normally I heal with a Shaman and a resto druid and there I tend to be one of the tank healers and always choose the tank that has the melee group around him so I can heal with atonement for as much of the fight as the incoming damage allows This is because Cork my resto druid buddy is just a freaking God at raid healing and Jibba tha Shaman just loves to tank heal. When Cork vanishes (he works on a boat at sea for weeks at a time) I often end up with  Phöenix, a pally and then I switch to raid healing.

Q) What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

A) Druids would be my number one class to heal with especially now the shaman totem has been nerfed because they make my job so much easier with all them hots bouncing around.

Q) What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

A) In 10 man the worst class is another priest who has played Discipline, simply because even as Holy spec their instant reaction to seeing someone in trouble is to shield them which really should be left to the disc priest but other than that it is druids, cos they make me look bad on the meters!

Q) What is your worst habit as a healer? 

A) Believe it or not as a Disc Priest it is not shielding enough. I think 25 man raiding in Wrath made me hate the spell so much because I did little more than spam bubbles, especially on P1 of the Lich King I now prefer NOT to use it. Blizzard also didn't help by increasing its mana cost and halving the up-time of it too.

Q) What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? 

A) People either squealing for heals or saying that X person needs heals. If you can't trust your healers judgement then either the healing team is bad or you trust nobody.

Q) Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? 

A) Yes, extremely well balanced, as stated before we are masters of nothing but good enough at the lot.

Q) What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

A) The initial check is raid deaths and could they have been avoided if I had healed them and Skada for helping make that decision mid-fight outside the game World of Logs is priceless.

Q) What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?  

A) That Holy priests can't tank heal and that Disc priests can't raid heal.

Q) What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? 

A) Mana conservation. The game until you hit 85 is a breeze on mana and allows the formation of bad habits with Flash Heal and Binding Heal

Q) If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?  
A) I always worry about my healing output and apart from that the other pattern is that I do not use Prayer of Mending enough.

Q) Haste or Crit or Mastery and why?

A) Haste to soft cap then crit. The haste is purely for the extra renew tick and the crit is good now for the Divine Aegis procs and the extra healing now we got 200% from crits.

Q) What healing class do you feel you understand least?  

A) Shaman, I haven't played the resto spec enough and I'm sure there is more to them now than just Chain Heal. I just can't get the time to devote to learning it at the moment. Maybe I should try harder I know.

Q) What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? 
A) Most of my main heal bar is mouseover macros and my favorite is the one I use for Healing and Smiting with:

/castsequence reset=combat [@mouseover,harm,nodead]Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite;[@mouseover,help,nodead][@player]Heal

I use a lot of addons, but my favorites have to be Clique, Grid (inc many modules) and GTFO. Clique just make healing so much easier and is really something Blizzard should build into the game, why they haven't is beyond me. Grid is great for raid frames, the Blizzard ones are getting close to replacing it but it is not quite there yet. GTFO is great especially when in healer tunnel vision mode, I have blogged about its awesomeness so won't bore you again, just get it and never worry about standing in the fire again!

Q) Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
A) I like to get enough spirit until I'm happy I can heal stuff without panicing about being OOM halfway through a fight then stack Intellect in order to get more mana and bigger heals/shields more »

A week ago today 4.2 launched and the Firelands raid was thrust upon us. I was happy that we managed to kill Cho'Gall pre-nerf but a little sad that we failed to get Nefarian and Al'Akir down and having seen the Tier 11 content post nerf I'm a little bit more miffed than I was this time last week. Anyhow, I am sure you, my loyal readers don't want to know that, you want the low-down on the Firelands!

Day one saw almost the entire server head there and start farming rep like men (and women) possessed, I fell into this trap in Icecrown Citadel and regretted it because all it did was make me bored of the trash upto Marrowgar even quicker than the rest of the place and despite being a complete rep whore I'm not prepared to suffer that again. The reports in /2 of exotic epics and masses of rep kept flooding in but I resisted the temptation. I did have a quick 30 minutes on my lock as some guildies were missing a DPS but I kept resisting the temptation on Evlyxx.
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Maelstrom Crystal prices on Shadowsong EU Tuesday 12 July 2011

Every now and again you come across something by accident in the old Auction House farming business. Yesterday was one such time and over TeamSpeak came the message, "Are people crazy there are loads of 353/9 epics on the AH for less than 100g, that's cheaper than Maelstrom Crystals".......

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Welcome to the first of my guides on healing strategies for the Cataclysm dungeons, yes I KNOW its six months in and us veterans can do it sleep walk but many alts and new players will be coming through about now. My viewpoint will be from that of a priest, but much of the information will be generic to help out other healing classes also. Even if you're not a healer you can get some benefit from reading as you'll understand how you can help out your healer at key times during the encounters.

The Throne of the Tides is a short dungeon with 4 bosses, it is located in Abyssal Depths and is part of the Abyssal Maw complex. Our enemies here are naga, murlocs, faceless ones and servants of the Old Gods.
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